From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, a network of young urban migrant men created an underground pulp fiction publishing industry in the city of Dar es Salaam. As texts that were produced in the underground economy of a city whose trajectory was increasingly charted outside of formalized planning and investment, these novellas reveal more than their narrative content alone. These texts were active components in the urban social worlds of the young men who produced them. They reveal a mode of urbanism otherwise obscured by narratives of decolonization, in which urban belonging was constituted less by national citizenship than by the construction of social networks, economic connections, and the crafting of reputations. This article argues that pulp fiction novellas of socialist era Dar es Salaam are artifacts of emergent forms of male sociability and mobility. In printing fictional stories about urban life on pilfered paper and ink, and distributing their texts through informal channels, these writers not only described urban communities, reputations, and networks, but also actually created them.

3 The term “informal sector” was first coined by anthropologist Keith Hart in 1973, based on his work in Accra, Ghana: “Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana,” Journal of Modern African Studies11, 1 (1973): 61–89. For more recent evaluations of the term, see Hansen, –Karen Tranberg and Vaa, Mariken, “Introduction” to Reconsidering Informality: Perspectives from Urban Africa (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2004), 7–20; Roy, Ananya and AlSayyad, Nezar, Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004); James, Deborah and Hull, Elizabeth, “Introduction: Popular Economies in South Africa,” Africa82, 1 (2012): 1–19.

5 According to World Bank estimates, during the 1970s Tanzania was the country with the third-fastest urbanization rate in the world, after Mozambique and the United Arab Emirates. World Bank, World Development Report 1994, 222–23.

6Ferguson, James, Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

7 For recent in-depth historical examinations of the history of African socialism in Tanzania, see Schneider, Leander, Government of Development: Peasants and Politicians in Postcolonial Tanzania (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014); and Lal, Priya, African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

13Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 91.

14 Westad describes this as a strand of thinking across the Third World in the wake of colonial underdevelopment, as leaders saw the mobilization of manpower and resources as the way to pursue modernization in the absence of wealth and industrial infrastructure. Ibid., 90–91.

15 On this point, see especially Lal, Priya, “Militants, Mothers and the National Family: Ujamaa, Gender and Rural Development in Postcolonial Tanzania,” Journal of African History51, 1 (2010): 1–20, 7–8.

16Callaci, Emily, “‘Chief Village in a Nation of Villages’: History, Race and Authority in Tanzania's Dodoma Plan,” Urban History43, 1 (2016): 96–116. Similarly, Andrew Burton argues that while the colonial state vilified the urban poor with the language of racial stereotyping, the postcolonial state instead vilified the urban poor by invoking nationalism, socialism, and tradition; “The Haven of Peace Purged: Tackling the Undesirable and Unproductive Poor in Dar es Salaam, ca. 1950–1980s,” International Journal of African Historical Studies40, 1 (2007): 119–51.

17Burton, Andrew and Burgess, Gary, “Introduction,” in Burton, Andrew and Charton-Bigot, Hélène, eds., Generations Past: Youth in East African History (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 8; Reid, War in Precolonial Eastern Africa; Willis, Justin, Potent Brews: A Social History of Alcohol in East Africa (Oxford: James Currey, 2002): 50–60; Reid, Richard, “Arms and Adolescence: Male Youth, Warfare and Statehood in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Africa,” in Burton, Andrew and Charton-Bigot, Hélène, eds., Generations Past: Youth in East African History (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 25–43; Rockel, Stephen J., Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2006).

18Glassman, Jonathon, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856–1888 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995); Hanson, Holly, “Queen Mothers and Good Government in Buganda: The Loss of Women's Political Power in Nineteenth-Century East Africa,” in Geiger, Susan, Musisi, Nakanyike, and Allman, Jean Marie, eds., Women in African Colonial Histories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); McKittrick, Meredith, “Forsaking Their Fathers? Colonialism, Christianity and Coming of Age in Ovamboland, Northern Namibia,” in Miescher, Stephan and Lindsay, Lisa, eds., Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003).

22 John Iliffe argued that TANU fed on intergenerational tensions; A Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For more recent, in-depth explorations of intergenerational tensions in Tanzanian nationalist politics, see Burton, Andrew, “Urchins, Loafers and the Cult of the Cowboy: Urbanization and Delinquency in Dar es Salaam, 1916–61,” Journal of African History41 (2001): 199–216; Brennan, James R., “Youth, the Tanu Youth League and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,” Africa76, 2 (2006): 221–46; Ivaska, Andrew, “Of Students, ‘Nizers,’ and a Struggle over Youth: Tanzania's 1966 National Service Crisis,” Africa Today51, 3 (2005): 83–107. For a broader look at the idiom of “fatherhood” in postcolonial African politics, see Schatzberg, Michael, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).

23Prakash, Gyan, “Imagining the City, Darkly,” in Prakash, Gyan, ed., Noir Urbanisms: Dystopic Images of the Modern City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 3. For other explorations of adaptations of crime thrillers as a form of social commentary in local settings, see Stavans, Ilan, Antiheroes: Mexico and Its Detective Novel, Lytle, Jesse H. and Mattson, Jennifer A., trans. (Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Associated University Presses, 1997); and Borenstein, Eliot, Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), ch. 6.

25Peterson, Derek R., Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya, Social History of Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2004); and “The Intellectual Lives of Mau Mau Detainees,” Journal of African History49 (2008): 73–91.

26 Crawford Young describes the late 1970s through the late 1980s as a distinctive phase of “decline and state crisis” across the African continent; The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of Independence, 1960–2010 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), 23.

29 My use of “soft infrastructure” is informed by Brian Larkin, who defines infrastructure as the “totality of both technical and cultural systems that create institutionalized structures whereby goods of all sorts circulate, connecting and binding people into collectivities.” Citing Simone, he argues that certain infrastructures are “soft,” such as knowledge of a language or aesthetic that allows participation in a community, and therefore, mobility and access to urban networks and resources. Larkin, B., Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 5–7.

32 This included a strong critique of the influence of foreign films on the morality of urban youth. Mbuguni, L. A. and Ruhumbika, Gabriel, “TANU and National Culture,” in Ruhumbika, Gabriel, ed., Towards Ujamaa: Twenty Years of TANU leadership (Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau, 1974). Brennan, James discusses this in, “Democratizing Cinema and Censorship in Tanzania, 1920–1980,” International Journal of African Historical Studies38, 3 (2005): 481–511.

35 For the impact the border closing had on the Nairobi-based East African Literature Bureau and the East African Publishing House, see Chachage, C.S.L., The Tanzanian Publishing Industry (Hull: Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Hull, 1994), 50–56.

45 This is based on estimates from advertisements in the newspapers the Daily News and Wakati ni Huu in 1982, which advertise novellas selling for between 30 and 40 Tanzanian shillings. For comparison, tickets to see Urafiki Jazz Band cost 8–10 shillings, as did seeing a movie at a cinema. See also “Paying Dearly for Books,” Daily News, 3 Nov. 1981, which estimated the cost of imported books as ranging from 330 to 350 shillings.

46 In the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, newspapers ranged in price from around 50 cents to 2 shillings, judging from the prices printed on the newspapers Uhuru, Mzalendo, the Daily News, and the Sunday News.

49 For late colonial era state publishing endeavors, see Andrew Ivaska, “Negotiating ‘Culture’ in a Cosmopolitan Capital: Urban Style and the State in Colonial and Postcolonial Dar Es Salaam” (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), esp. ch. 3.

50 Interview with Jackson Kalindimya, Dar es Salaam, 11 June 2013.

51 Interview with Kajubi Mukajanga, Dar es Salaam, 8 June 2013.

52 As James R. Brennan argues, to be a youth was to not yet be a provider for others; “Youth,” 221–22.

61Simbamwene, John, Mwisho wa Mapenzi (Dar es Salaam: Longman, 1971). Similarly, in Ganzel's, EdiNdoto ya Mwendawazimu (Dar es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau, 1972), the character Mishack, an urban migrant from Rufiji and a reformed ex-criminal, is convinced by his fiancée Hilda, a beautiful nightclub singer and also an urban migrant, that for them to get the money needed to marry he must help her steal diamonds from mines in Mwanza.

68 See, for example, M. Sikawa, “Is It Time Tanzania Banned these Western Films?” Daily News, 24 Jan. 1975, on the scandal of young lovers showing affection in public after seeing Western films. For a discussion of attempts of town elders to ban cinema in colonial Dar es Salaam, see Burton, Andrew, African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam (Oxford: James Currey, 2005), 75; and Brennan, James, “Democratizing Cinema; Laura Fair, “Drive-in Socialism: Debating Modernities and Development in Dar es Salaam Tanzania,” American Historical Review118, 4 (2013): 1077–104.

69 Chachage, Tanzanian Publishing Industry, 50–56. See also Olden, Anthony, “For a poor nation a library service is vital”: Establishing a National Public Library Service in Tanzania in the 1960s,” Library Quarterly75, 4 (2005): 421–45.

73 For example, in Elvis Musiba's Kufa na Kupona, the bandit who attacks the hero Willy Gamba is described as looking like “Cowboy Cuchillo,” the bandit Cuchillo Sanchez from spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Sollima in the mid- and late 1960s. Additionally, in Ndibalema's, CharlesNimeponzeka (Dar es Salaam: Longman, 1970), the evil uncle who tries to kill his niece's lover is part of a gang of young men who wear tight clothes and cowboy hats. Later, many novels featured young protagonists who were skilled in martial arts, or fans of the martial arts. See, for example, Kassam, Joto la Fedha; Simbamwene, John, Dogodogo Wanitesa (Morogoro: Jomssi Publizaitons, 1982). Less overtly, Mkufya's, W. protagonist in The Wicked Walk (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1977) is a fan of Bruce Lee. Mukaganja, Kajubi went on to publish a biography of Bruce Lee in Kiswahili: Bruce Lee: Mflame wa Kung Fu (Dar es Salaam: Grand Arts Promotion, 1982). For an exploration of the meaning of kung fu for Ujamaa-era Dar es Salaam youth, see Joseph, May, “Kung Fu Cinema and Frugality,” in Mirzoeff, Nicholas, ed., The Visual Culture Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), 433–50.

74 This is a theme in Tanzanian historiography, appearing throughout Iliffe's, JohnA Modern History of Tanganyika (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Brennan, James, “Youth, the TANU Youth League and Managed Vigilantism in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.” Africa76, 2 (2006): 221–46; Ivaska Cultured States; and Burton, Andrew, “Urchins, Loafers and the Cult of the Cowboy: Urbanization and Delinquency in Dar es Salaam, 1916–61,” Journal of African History41 (2001): 199–216; and Burton, Andrew, “Raw Youth, School-Leavers and the Emergence of Structural Unemployment in Late-Colonial Urban Tanganyika,” Journal of African History47 (2006): 363–87.

75 Stren, Urban Inequality, 87.

76 Mkabarah, Kizimbani. This novella was not the first time Mkabarah had explored the tensions between young men and older men with “traditional” ways of thinking in a way sympathetic to the former. In his first book, a biography of the Tanzanian pop musician Salum Abdallah, Mkabarah emphasized Abdallah's refined cosmopolitanism, religiosity, and rejection of all forms of delinquency. It dramatizes Abdallah's struggles to gain autonomy from his strict Arab father, who tried to plan his marriage and prevent him from following his chosen career path, which Mkabarah seems to suggest is a sign of his father's backwardness. In these texts, Mkabarah models a kind of manhood rooted in the struggle to claim autonomy from older generations; Mwanamuziki wa Zamani: Salum Abdallah (Dar es Salaam: University of Dar es Salaam Press, 1966).

82 This theme of suffering for the sake of love appears in many of Simbamwene's novels. For examples of a young male lover being tortured and physically abused for the sake of love, see Ndibalema, Nimeponzeka; Kajubi Mukaganja, Tuanze Lini?

84 Several scholars have spoken of romantic love in African history as a way of claiming modernity. See, for example, Cole, Jenifer and Thomas, Lynn M., “Thinking through Love in Africa,” in Cole, Jenifer and Thomas, Lynn M., eds., Love in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 5. Brian Larkin has argued that romantic love stories in Northern Nigeria, drawing on Bollywood film, offered youth a kind of “parallel modernity”: “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities,” Africa67, 3 (1997): 406–40. Laura Fair and Andreana Prichard have argued that virtuous romantic love was associated with the creation of national citizenship; see her “Making Love in the Indian Ocean: Hindi Films, Zanzibari Audiences and the Construction of Romance in the 1950s and 1960s,” in Cole, Jennifer and Thomas, Lynn, eds., Love in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); and Prichard, Andreana, “‘Let Us Swim in the Pool of Love’: Love Letters and Discourses of Community Composition in Twentieth-Century Tanzania,” Journal of African History54, 1 (2013): 103–22.

85 For a discussion of intergenerational tension between young men and elder men over practices such as polygamy, bridewealth, and so forth, and how caricatures of “sugar daddies” in the press played into this, see Ivaska, Cultured States, 166–205.

86 These debates raged in the newspapers of the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Public intellectuals and politicians debated whether polygyny should remain legal, whether the government should regulate bridewealth payments, whether youth could marry without their parents’ permission, whether unwed mothers should be allowed maternity leave from their jobs, and whether female students should be allowed to continue their studies after becoming pregnant. For a discussion of debates over marriage laws, see Ivaska, Cultured States, 166–205.

87 From an address by Euphrase Kezilahabi at an academic conference in Germany, which appears in “The Swahili Novel and the Common Man in East Africa,” in Schild, Ulla, ed., The East African Experience: Essays on English and Swahili Literature, 2nd Janheinz Jahn-Symposium (Mainz: Verlag, 1980), 78–79.

89 Among the twelve writers and children of writers that I interviewed, only one retained copies of all of his earlier publications, and in fact several writers asked me to share my photocopied versions with them. I came across them in used bookstalls in Dar es Salaam, in neglected uncatalogued boxes in Tanzanian libraries, and scattered in libraries across the United States and Europe.

90Tripp, Aili, Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Informal Urban Economy in Tanzania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

92 Perhaps most famously, Hammie Rajab went on to be a filmmaker in Tanzania's nascent film industry, adapting some of his novellas as short video films, until his death in 2011. Kajubi Mukajanga became a magazine publisher and eventually the CEO of the Media Council of Tanzania. Famous Tanzanian political cartoonist Godfrey Mwampembwa, known as Gado, got his start, as a Dar es Salaam teenager, publishing his cartoons in Kajubi Mukajanga's Wakati ni Huu, before becoming one of East Africa's best-known syndicated political cartoonists. Jackson Kalindimya works as a journalist for the newspaper Nipashe.

93 See the list of Tanzanian serial publications in the appendix to Sturmer's, MartinThe Media History of Tanzania (Peramiho: Ndanda Mission Press, 1998), 201–71.